Introduction of IELTS essay is the most important paragraph in your whole essay. This is where you basically make or break your score. If you can write a nice introduction you will make a good impression to your reader and a good impression is helpful in finally getting a higher band score. This is where basically the reader understands that, you understand the question, understand if you know what are you writing about and understand if you knew how to plan well. A weak introduction basically ends up with a poor score.
To write a well-organised and well-presented essay, you need to plan first. Until you have planned your essay, don’t start writing. Allow yourself 2-3 minutes to organize how you are going to develop your essay and which points and arguments you are going to emphasize on.
If your plan is ready, you are good to start writing. You should write 3-5 sentences for your IETLS essay introduction. Less than 3 sentences, you miss have missed something and more than 5 sentences means you are writing more than you need to and you might not finish the whole essay within the allowed 40 minutes time frame.
There are four questions your need to answer in the introduction. Once you planed properly, you have those answers ready. Now look at what four points you need to focus for your introduction part:
- What is the topic about?
- What is the question about?
- What is your opinion? and
- What are your reasons?
These above mentioned four things must be included in you introduction to write an introduction that will grab the attention of your reader.
If you have noticed, ‘topic’ and ‘question’ of an IELTS essay are not quite same!
Topic is the general idea what the question about and the question is specifically what are you ask to do. The question might ask you to choose between two things, present an argument on a specific topic and presenting advantages or disadvantages of something. You should be very general about the question and write the topic. All you do is to giving the idea what is it says about.
On the contrary, Question is more specific than the topic. You do not give a general idea while answering the question. You give a very specific answer to the question and state what you think about it. In the answer to the question you use expression like I believe, in my opinion, I think, from my point of view, I opine that etc.
Let’s clarify the differences between the topic and questions and then how to use these two in your introduction.
Consider the following essay topic and then from the paragraph below notice the differences between a topic and a question:
Essay Topic:
Some people believe that history is very important and we must study the past to understand the present. Other say that it has little or no use at all.
Example ‘Topic’: History, in common parlance, is the record of the past events and it bears immense importance for the human civilization. (Note that a general idea about the History has been given here and in no way the question has been answered.)
Example ‘Question’: Although there are good arguments against the importance of history, I personally believe that history plays a crucial role apprehending the present situation. (The personal opinion has been firmly stated here and it answers the question asked in the essay topic).
Now that you are done with the topic and question, you should move on to the thesis part. Here, the reader must understand which side you’ve chosen and what are you going to argue.
In the final sentence of your Introduction, writhe your last sentence which states the reason for your standing. You don’t need to give every details but you will give the general reasons that, why you have chosen that one and at least give your reader (for IELTS your teacher) the idea what are you going to write about in the next paragraphs.
So the final introduction that would write should look like:
History, in common parlance, is the record of the past events and it bears immense importance for the human civilization. Although there are good arguments against the importance of history, I personally believe that history plays a crucial role apprehending the present situation. History is the key to understand the current situation and the world in which we live in and it teaches us how to build a better future.
Now pick an essay topic from our website and write a good introduction in the comment section of this page.
We look forward to reading your comment.